How to use the new Circle to Search tool

It’s common for things you want to know more about to appear on your phone screen, and we always want to make it easy to access Google. That’s why we created Circle to Search, a new way to search for information on your mobile device.

The idea is very simple. And in fact, its simplicity is its main selling point. Samsung (which makes one of its phones with this feature) gives an example of a person in the video who saw an orange dog lamp in the image, and asked what he was looking at. Instead of performing a text search that describes a match, you can simply circle the lamp with your finger to get matches from the web.

Shopping is the obvious use case here, but you can also identify plants and animals, search for words, and get context for what you’re looking at – anything you can use in a Google search.

Sounds good? Yes, if you have the right device.

Circle to Search was announced at the Samsung Galaxy S24 launch in mid-January and is available for Samsung Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and Galaxy S24 Ultra. As of the end of January, it was also introduced to Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.

We hope to see this feature available on other Android smartphones in the future, but we can’t guarantee anything will be released before 2023.

If you’re using Android with navigation buttons, press and hold the home button (circle) to launch Circle to Search. If you’re using gestures to navigate, press and hold the navigation handle at the bottom of the screen to access this feature.

The first time you do this, you will see an introductory screen that explains how the feature works.Tap let’s try it, You are now ready. (This screen will not be displayed for subsequent searches.)

Despite the name of this feature, you don’t actually have to circle what your search is based on. You can drag a line (useful for text) and doodle over it, or just tap and let Android’s smart AI figure out what you’re trying to select. (Most of the time it’s pretty accurate.)

If you have a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, you can use the S Pen instead of your finger. Handles will appear around your selection, and you can tap and drag them around if you want to expand or contract your search selection.

The results that pop up on your screen are very reminiscent of what you get with Google Lens. In fact, as far as I know, Circle to Search is just a faster way to do visual search available in Google Lens. Scroll down to see more results and tap a result to see it on the web.

Once you master the basics, you can add searches with additional context. There is a search bar at the top of the pop-up results. Tap here to enter additional queries (or tap the microphone icon to use your voice instead).

So you might ask, “What should I wear with this?” Ask about condiments (Google’s own example) or “Why is this trending?” or “What country are we in?” This is a useful way to create searches that are a little more complex than just searching for images.

As far as I know, what you can’t do yet is select multiple items on the screen to compare, or perform multiple searches at the same time. Additionally, some of the results may be hit or miss depending on the quality of your selection and how many similar images are available on the web.

Nevertheless, this seems like a really useful addition to Android. The real beauty of this feature is in the way it works on top of other apps, like Instagram captions, web page images, and podcast artwork. It doesn’t matter if the app in question allows you to select text or save images.

To exit Circle to Search, click in the upper left corner.[X]Tap. Tap the three dots in the top-right corner to see options to view your Google search history (across all apps and services) or delete the last 15 minutes of your search history.